Brand, link and communicate around your content, and you can set it free (SSWC)

We are at Tjärö, a small island in the Blekinge archipelago, for a weekend camp for social media folks – Sweden Social Web Camp. The event is an unconference, with the participants setting the agenda and signing up to hold sessions.

At one of the opening sessions, sydsvenskan.se gatered a group of journalists, bloggers and others to discuss the future of journalism. Starting out, they said “let’s not discuss the economics, but rather how to make great journalism online”. Needless to say, the two are related, so the discussion drifted in that direction towards the end. Morris Packer, The Bonnier Group/mobilab.se, objected to the term “good journalism”, and got the suggestion it be called “costly journalism” instead: The stuff that traditional journalists do and which costs a lot of money.

– When we don’t have monopoly on information, how can we make use of the numerous resources out there?, asked Gustav Svensson of Sydsvenskan.
Leo Wallentin, a freelance journalist, replied: You have to brand your content, to have interconnecting links so people can find it, and to be present where your content is present.
I think that’s a neat summary for all media companies who are struggling to understand how making your content widely available around the web can be good for you. If you communicate around your content you will still be the source where people turn to for related issues.

Other topics in this session were the use of real time statistics when deciding what makes the top of the front page online, what should and could be called journalism, if honesty isn’t more important than absolute truth and whether a great journalistic handicraft still can sell.